Sunday, June 14, 2009

Iran, part 2

Head over to the Huffington Post, where they've got unbelievable footage of the events unfolding in Iran today: what sounds like hundreds of people shouting on their rooftops at 4AM, motorcycle-mounted police charging protestors, and this comment from an Iranian journalist:

Please don't use the word "fraud" because it is mitigation of what has happened in Iran. Fraud is what was happening in the past 30 years. This is not fraud. They haven't [counted ] people's votes. Using the word fraud is like calling a deep cut a small scratch. There was no fraud; it was a coup.

RFE/RL: Please explain why you call it a coup. Based on what?

Journalist: Based on the military atmosphere that is now ruling [in the country], based on the threats against senior officials in the country. What are the elements of a coup in the world? Just now as we're speaking, [Mahmud Ahmadinejad] said I'll clean the Iranian establishment of all these corrupted elements. [If this isn't] a coup, then what is it?

Coup means that right now they're beating people in the streets. A coup means they didn't even count people's votes. They announced the results without opening the ballot boxes. It was sent as a circular to the state television, which announced it. Is it so difficult for the world to understand this?

Now entering Day 3, this thing is reaching cataclysmic proportions over there, and it's all being reported live on streaming video and Twitter. Amazing stuff.